Author: Charles Lenchner

In early May, in the wake of the Trump administration’s evolving immigration policies, the Murphy Institute convened national and local experts and leaders in a day long conference to discuss the implications of these changing positions for immigrant communities. In this excerpt, Muzaffar Chishti, Director of the Migration Policy Institute, discuss the most insidious and less well-known aspects of Donald Trump’s progress toward fulfilling his campaign’s anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Single-payer healthcare is back on the radar after the collapse of Trump’s attempt to “repeal and replace” the ACA. Senator Bernie Sanders announced that he would be introducing a “Medicare for All” bill soon. While pollsters have known for years that a majority of Americans support single-payer, universal heath care, including many Republicans, the conservative case for it hasn’t received much attention.

Conservative pundit David Frum writes:“Whatever else the 2016 election has done, it has emancipated Republicans from one of their own worst self-inflicted blind spots. Health care may not be a human right, but the lack of universal health coverage in a wealthy democracy is a severe, unjustifiable, and unnecessary human wrong. As Americans lift this worry from their fellow citizens, they’ll discover that they have addressed some other important problems too.” (http://pnhp.org/blog/2017/03/28/can-more-republicans-support-single-payer/)

The problems Frum lists range from hindered entrepreneurship, the struggles of the white working class, and a lack of racial equity. While not all of these problems weigh equally on the minds of conservatives, the understanding that universal health care coverage will make other goals easier to achieve.

Avik Roy of National Review argues that Republicans must “come to agree that it’s a legitimate goal of public policy to ensure that all Americans have access to quality health care” and that it is a mistake to “cede this moral ground to the Left”. He continues: “To credibly advance this approach, conservatives must make one change to their stance: They have to agree that universal coverage is a morally worthy goal…Ensuring that every American has access to quality health coverage is a legitimate goal of public policy, and it can be done in a way that expands freedom and reduces the burden on American taxpayers.” (http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/368772/conservative-case-universal-coverage-avik-roy)

Many past arguments against universal healthcare have revolved around a dislike of larger government, and the burden on taxpayers Roy mentions. In his article in IVM, Craig Burlin argues that neither of these have to be a reality in order to accomplish something along the lines of “Medicare for All”. He points out that:

“Unless someone is very poor or disabled and likely receiving disability or Medicaid benefits already, the tax base can be broad. This could be via a transaction tax, meaning everyone would pay including the underground economy and those who are at an age where they might forego coverage. The insurance pool would therefore be 100%, an actuarial benefit.” (https://ivn.us/2016/03/04/conservative-solutions-to-universal-health-care/)

He also references Australia’s system in which nearly half of the population retains private health insurance despite being entitled to free treatment, saying “Those of greater means can always afford things others cannot”. Burlin also argues the moral stance, similar to Frum and Roy saying that “There is a compelling argument to be made that basing medical care entirely on the profit motive is likely going to produce the kinds of winners and losers that are hard to justify on an ethical basis.”

While such arguments from the right are unlikely to convert Republican Congress members any time soon, there’s evidence to suggest that movement is possible.

In response to the closer alliance between Wall Street and the Trump Administration, protestors staged a marriage between Donald Trump and Wall Street on Valentine’s Day, complete with giant puppets and fake money raining down on the assembled crowd. Act.tv documented Bernie Sanders’ appearance to denounce Trump’s pretense of ‘Draining the Swamp’, and lying about his ties to Wall Street.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created in the face of industry resistance. With a Republican Congress and President Trump in the White House, it is facing an attack that could be the final blow.

In a joint statement last week, Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. John Ratcliffe presented the Repeal CFPB Act, which targets Title X of Dodd-Frank. The congressmen claim that if passed, the Act would “free consumers and small businesses from the CFPB’s regulatory blockades and financial activism.” In fact, it would completely eliminate the CFPB as an agency. (Consumerist, Lawmakers Introduce Legislation that would Abolish the CFPB)

Should the efforts of Cruz and Ratcliffe fail, there is still House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling’s plan to revise his earlier bill with the aim of weakening, if not completely destroy the CFPB and pacify banks by removing some key components of annual stress tests that evaluate how a bank will perform in a financial crisis.

In a memo to lawmakers, Hensarling outlined the details of his plan. In an article last week, Bloomberg News reported some of the specifics from the memo:

Hensarling is seeking to eliminate much of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s regulatory powers, and transform it into a law enforcement agency. The memo proposes the controversial regulator only be able to pass rules that have been mandated by Congress. The plan would further restrict the agency by eliminating its authority to supervise financial firms and doing away with a public database documenting consumer complaints. (Bloomberg News, New GOP Memo Targets Stress Tests, CFPB in Dodd-Frank Changes)

Hensarling’s other proposal addresses the role of the CFPB director. He has asserted his belief that the bureau should be under the supervision of a single director, and that the director should ‘be removable by the President at-will”. (Bloomberg News) Hensarling has also announced his opinion that the current CFPB director should be fired by Trump before his term ends next summer. The Bureau is presently engaged in appealing a court ruling that would permit the President to do exactly that without cause.

At last year’s conference on Public Sector Unions, Saqib Bhatti presented on how debt has replaced income in the US economy. As debt skyrocketed, bank profits have soared, but the impacts on other parts of the economy – and particularly public workers – are negative and getting worse.

Sadiq Bhatti is the Executive Director of the ReFund America Project and a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He works on campaigns to rebalance the relationship between Wall Street and local communities.

Since Trump’s election, a number of ‘new’ network and campaigns have sprung up, seemingly out of nowhere. The smallest of these groups has attracted thousands of volunteers in a short period of time. New Labor Forum compiled this list as a resource for those seeking to understand the landscape of this new wave of ‘from below’ activism.

The largest and most prominent of these is of course the recent Women’s March on Washington, which took place this past Saturday. They intend on continuing the mission of the march with actions promoted to their supporters.

It’s true that the ‘newness’ of each group is up for debate; an effort led by Michael Moore might be new, but his personal brand is not. The resource guide based group ‘Indivisible’ is new, but the founding members are congressional staffers who are known quantities to many political insiders. What is new, is that social media and the rapidly accelerating news cycle have made it possible for newly crafted brands to appear out of nowhere and engaged millions in intense, sustained activism in a matter of weeks, leaving established organizations to look for ways to connect in order to remain relevant.

One Hundred Days of Resistance

Michael Moore

He is calling for actions during the first 100 days and releasing his new film TrumpLand.

Also known as DCAT, they formed initially to prevent Trump from getting elected. Their new mission is holding the Trump and his administration accountable along with any elected officials who support him.

Swing Districts are places where the winner of the last House of Representatives election was determined by a thin margin. Swing Left helps you find and commit to supporting progressives in your closest Swing District so that you can help ensure we take back the House in 2018.

LittleSis is the snarky alternative to Big Brother – a way for the little people to watch the powerful. A project of Public Accountability Project, a public watchdog group, LittleSis is a tool for conducting research on corporate power and the wealthy, to track corruption and conflicts of interest.

As the names of cabinet appointments have been made public, LittleSis has been posting reports about the relationships between nominees and corporate entities, to help the public better understand who and what they represent.

The City Is the Factory examines the “relocation of the space of protest from the factory to the city . . . see[ing] in it a shift that is both historically distinct and politically significant. Across these city-oriented struggles, [the book’s essay’s] focus on the increasing prominence of what Henri Lefebvre called “right to the city” demands and...

To what degree is the election outcome largely a result of an anxious and enraged white working class, sections of which either endorse the Trump campaign’s virulent racism or are willing to overlook it in favor of his tough talk on free trade and a rigged political system? How should labor and progressive activists understand and respond to the racism the campaign both fueled and exposed? What did the 2016 election tell us about the wisdom and viability of the Obama coalition, which depends on demographic changes presumed to be advantageous, rather than on birthing a multi-racial working-class? What was the nature and extent of organized labor’s impact on the election, particularly in the rust belt?